Mayan Interface

Near the end of the Terminal Classic Mayan period, a priest-king commits a murder where a sacrifice is needed. The consequences of his deed will reach across worlds and ages. In our own time, Lydia Rosenstrom is a master translator working with an archeological team in Yucatán and on a virtual reality simulation of the ancient site. She is drawn into a dangerous convergence of realities. This tightly-woven tale blends mysticism, technology, archaeology, authentic Mayan history. This is not a tale about the supposed end of the world! It is an engrossing story about challenges, consciousness change, and transformation.

Silver Medal for Adventure Fiction, Living Now Book Awards

"Modern science and ancient magic take on new and exciting meanings." — Fred Alan Wolf, physicist and author

"The circular nature of time and the need for change are recurring themes in this well-researched novel" — Sharon Sullivan Mújica, former Director, Yucatec Maya Program, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University

Submitted:Feb 22, 2013
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Lydia Rosenstrom is a translator of Mayan glyphs and a
shaman-in-training. This excerpt describes an encounter in
virtual reality between Lydia and a creature of ancient myth.
Charon, a skeletal death figure, is Lydia's uay, an
alter-ego who appears to her in shamanic states.

Relax.

Without thinking.

Without expectations.

She remembered that the Tarot Death card was nestled in her
blouse pocket.

"You might be of use at a time like this, eh, Charon?" she
murmured, taking the card in her hand. Lydia closed her eyes and
concentrated on the image of the skeleton that was also her own
uay. She felt her mind settle into a paradoxical feeling
of reverie and alertness. It was a state she often thought of as
"wide focus," encompassing both intense concentration and a free
flow of thought. People called it right-brained thinking, but
Lydia didn't like to pin it down to just half of her brain. It
always felt to her as if her whole mind was engaged, every one of
her neurons active. It was as if her nerve endings reached beyond
her physical brain into the boundless area of her concentration.

It was the state in which she could become deeply involved in a
drawing or some aspect of her work, letting go of the rest of the
world and infinitely enlarging the space and time she experienced
at the moment. It was when unexpected ideas and images were most
likely to drop into her mind. It was the space of daydreams and
of the greatest creativity. And it was also the state of shamanic
awareness.

Lydia opened her eyes. The temple had darkened and the macaw was
glowing. She held out the hand in which she was holding the card.
She couldn't see the card, but her hand was there-gray and
slightly unformed, just as it looked last night.

She slipped the card into her pocket, then raised her hand again.
It began to move without her conscious volition, shadowy fingers
following the intricate pattern on the virtual wall. Again, she
heard that ringing, crystalline sound. She watched with serene,
hushed interest as the diamond pattern of the mural seemed to
peel away from the temple walls and spiral around her. The
details of the temple melted into a different space that took on
the quality of an Escher drawing-an area not constrained to the
height, width, and depth of the room.

Extra-dimensional.

She felt herself fill with a deep joy.

During her brief visit here before, her impressions of the space
had been vague, scattered, dreamlike. But in the fullness of her
wide focus, everything seemed astoundingly vivid. Through the
gray lattice, Lydia could now see a midnight-blue sky speckled
with blazing, sparkling stars. The patterned sky seemed to curve
closely over her, forming a corridor that writhed slowly in a
snarling, snake-like motion. It was like entering a living
tunnel, a sinuous space that constantly shifted its barely-seen
perimeters. And was it Lydia's imagination, or did the very
surface beneath her feel softer, less stable, in subtle but
constant motion?

No questions of delusion or trickery made Lydia hesitate now.
Whoever or whatever had created this reality, it was too
wonderful to run away from. She took a step forward into the
tunnel. When the darkness again gathered into a seemingly living
and sentient form, she walked directly toward it.

Lydia realized she was holding her breath. She let out a long
sigh, as quietly as possible. The dark form didn't seem to be
coming any closer, but it was changing. Colors emerged-red, with
touches of black and yellow. Lydia saw two bright flashes, like
circles of reflected light.

Then the fog-like veil between her and the creature parted, and
Lydia saw the face clearly. It had a nearly straight beak filled
with blue, jeweled teeth. Its eyes, surrounded by golden disks,
were strangely human. The image was absolutely familiar to her.

The creature was raising its wings …

The macaw leaped forward into the air, sailing toward her with a
wild cry that seemed neither human nor bird. Time and motion
seemed to freeze as Lydia took in a succession of details: light
refracting off the jagged edge of a razor-beak that clacked with
a sound like castanets; fury glittering from a gold-ringed human
eye; hard, metallic-looking feathers reaching outward, sweeping
downward.

She knew who this creature was.

"Itzam-Yeh!" she shouted, raising her hands above her head in a
gesture of triumphant greeting. Her own shout contained a note of
wild exultation that sounded unlike her-as if she had become
somebody else.

Charon!

She had shouted with Charon's voice!

The macaw veered upward, flying over her head, talons slicing
just inches past her face. His wingspan must have been at least
twelve feet across. The flapping of those wings created a deep,
percussive pounding in Lydia's head that almost shook her off her
feet. The air churned around her in swirls and eddies in response
to the thundering wings, and the diamond-patterned walls drew
back to accommodate his flight.

The macaw circled above her, scooping and ducking, rising and
diving-sometimes a dozen or so yards away, other times so close
that Lydia almost expected to feel a harsh brush of feathers
across her face-but always with a gold-ringed human eye locked
upon her.

With an abrupt outcry, Itzam-Yeh broke out of his low orbit and
sprang upward, ascending and diminishing in the distance,
becoming a red speck against the rapidly-expanding net across the
sky. The farther the macaw flew, the deeper Lydia's sense of
kinship became. She felt like a child again-or as if a lost,
forgotten child had been reborn inside of her.

Then the pounding of wings seemed to grow louder again. In fact,
Lydia felt as if that pounding was coming from deep inside her.
Had her very heartbeat synchronized itself with the beating of
those great wings?

It took her a moment to realize that it wasn't her heartbeat that
she felt, but her breath. It came and went in rapid, throbbing
pants and gasps, erupting from her solar plexus, her entire
diaphragm rippling violently like a bed sheet hanging from a
clothesline in the wind.

Laughter!

She was laughing aloud!

It was a powerful, penetrating laughter that went far beyond joy
or even hilarity. It was the kind of laughter that could only
come from the fulfillment of some deep, long-held, long-denied
wish-the kind of laughter that might arise from being reunited
with a long-lost friend one had given up for dead. It was also a
singularly insolent, mocking laugh-not like her own laughter at
all.